If you have to commute there's a good chance you've ridden a subway at some point. The experience of riding those things can be unpleasant enough, but making your way through the station can be a terrible experience all on its own. Finding a map, locating the right train, trying to figure out whether or not you should risk buying food from a nearby food stand, etc. It's enough to make the average person curse the people who built these underground train dungeons.
Despite that, the idea of creating your own subway station was apparently enticing enough for the folks at DMM Games to build an entire game around it. If you happen to be a big fan of optimizing routes, satisfying the needs of thousands of little people, and watching numbers go up, then STATIONflow might turn out to be far more addictive than you would think.
Master Of Commuting
STATIONflow is a simulation and management game where the player is put in the role of an architect for a massive, incredibly busy subway station. You need to connect corridors together and put up signage to point commuters towards the entrances, exits, and subway-lines that they're looking for.
You use STATIONflow's tools to lay down different sizes of corridors to connect the entrances together so that commuters can find their way to and from the subways. After a while, these travelers will have needs that have to be met, like putting in vending machines so they can get a drink, or installing washrooms, for obvious reasons. On top of that, new kinds of pedestrians will eventually show up, like tourists who need information signs to tell them where to go, or senior citizens who need elevators because they can't climb stairs.
Soon, you'll be staring at this gigantic, multi-level subway station frantically looking for anyone with an angry face icon over their head so you can figure out what their problem is and how you can solve it. It almost turns STATIONflow into a puzzle game at times, as you'll be forced to determine why a passenger is having issues finding the stairs or how to improve the flow of commuters from a busy entrance.
Much to my surprise, getting my station to run smoothly felt immensely satisfying. Juggling the population's satisfaction in order to increase my cash flow to build even more new corridors or buildings became a delightfully addictive gameplay loop. It's the same kind of dopamine rush someone might get from running the perfect kingdom in a Civilization game. Only instead of keeping an entire country happy, you just need to help a bunch of people make their way to their boring office job. It's also bizarre how the game could be both relaxing yet stressful, as you can pause time to perfectly lay out your building plans while also losing your mind over how to properly enhance the flow of your station.
Missing The Train
Of course, there are some aspects of STATIONflow that could have used a little tightening up. The tutorial covers the basics of running a station, but doesn't teach the player how certain systems work or how to utilize later buildings and items. This means you'll have to use the time-honored method of trial and error to learn how certain elements work. It's not impossible to figure out, but since the game gets significantly more complicated as it goes along, a little more explanation on some of the gameplay mechanics would have been nice.
Some aspects of the UI or gameplay menus can be a little finicky at times. It can be awkward to rotate or reshape a corridor to properly connect it to other parts of the station. Switching between the different levels can be cumbersome, which then leads to difficulty when connecting floors with stairs or elevators. It's also a little unclear where you should place the signs pointing toward entrances and subway-lines, as there were times where pedestrians seemed unsure of where to go even though there was a clearly placed sign a few feet ahead of them. But considering how many people are terrible at navigation, that might just be a case of reality bleeding into this game.
STATIONflow is graphically simplistic, which can make it hard to determine which commuter is which at times. Without zooming in all the way, it can be easy to confuse a regular traveler with a senior citizen. For the most part, I liked how minimalistic the graphics were, as it resembled the look of a map in a train station. However, a little more detail on certain objects would have made it easier to identify them without having to click or zoom in on them.
The Most Fun You Can Have In A Subway Station
I can't say I've ever been fascinated by or even remotely interested in the day-to-day operation of a subway station. Yet, there I was, pouring hours into this game deciding on the best place to put my escalators and pointing elderly passengers towards ticket machines. The premise of STATIONflow definitely doesn't scream fun, but if you're big into simulation and/or management games, then you'll find a lot to love about making the trains run on time.
A PC copy of STATIONflow was provided to TheGamer for this review. STATIONflow is now available on PC.
STATIONflow